New Mercies (8 page)

Mr. Satterfield took out a handkerchief and mopped his face. He lifted the pistol and pushed the newspaper clippings across the desk to me. “Here’s you the newspapers. I saved them for you.” He opened the gun and removed a handmade bullet, which he tossed from hand to hand. “Shot dead by Bayard Lott, the old rascal,” he said, setting down the bullet in order to push the top clipping to me with the gun. “And when Bayard saw what he done, he turned the gun on himself. Did I tell you he used an Odell derringer, made right here in Natchez.” He held out the revolver to me.

“That one?”

“No, ma’am. One just like it. This one was my daddy’s. He carried it in the War, along with a rifle, a bowie knife, and a pistol. The captain had an Odell, too. I believe Bayard used his to shoot one of Miss Amalia’s goats. There’s some who say that is what caused this tragedy.” Mr. Satterfield put the gun back on his desk, and I pushed the barrel aside with my finger so that it did not point at me. “Oh, it don’t hold but one bullet,” he said. “Now when you think about it, that means Bayard shot Miss Amalia; then he reloaded in order to shoot himself. Bayard must have done some heavy thinking while he did that. He killed himself a’purpose.”

“One of the stories in the Denver paper reported the sheriff didn’t find a dead goat.”

“Oh, it did, did it? Well, maybe Ezra hauled it off and him and Aunt Polly cut it up. Had you thought of that?”

“No.” I wondered if Mr. Satterfield had, or if the words had just come out of his mouth. Shifting in the chair, which wobbled a little, I asked, “Was it murder-suicide?”

“You could call it that. I don’t know what else you could call it.”

“Is that what the sheriff called it?”

“It is. Like I said, Bayard shot Miss Amalia, then reloaded and shot himself. We know how he done it, but we don’t know why. I guess we never will.”

I asked about Mrs. Lott, since one of the stories speculated that she might have killed them both.

Mr. Satterfield sat up straight and slapped his knee. “Magdalene Lott? She was a beauty in her time, and in Natchez, that counts for something—more than something, in fact, although not as much as money. But it was enough to make up for the fact that she was never quite as bright as day. Why, in a million years, she couldn’t have shot Miss Amalia, reloaded, killed Bayard, and then have put a gun in his hand. And old Bayard would not have stood there while she did it. Poor old soul. I guess she lived in the shadow of Miss Amalia all her life. They were engaged to be married, you know, Bayard and Miss Amalia. Bayard was besotted with Amalia Bondurant. But Miss Amalia called it off.”

“Mrs. Lott claimed in the paper that
he
broke the engagement.”

“You can believe that if you want to, but nobody in Natchez does. Ask anyone who knows whether Bayard Lott was the same after Miss Amalia left out. She broke off with him about the time Emilie Bondurant went off to New Orleans to have your daddy. Miss Emilie could hardly walk. She was too old to be in that condition. She had to be pushed around in a roller chair, and Miss Amalia went with her as nurse-companion. There’s
some said that was why Miss Amalia broke the engagement, but don’t you believe it. I think Bayard done something she couldn’t tolerate, and it estranged those two for fifty-five years.”

He leaned back precariously in his chair. “That and then her mama dying was all too much. Miss Amalia wasn’t never the same person.” He shook his head. “There was some of us young men thought maybe we had a chance with Miss Amalia with Bayard out of the picture, but she never was interested in men after she broke with Bayard. I asked Miss Amalia once what Bayard did to her. She didn’t care for the question and asked me, ‘Do you need to know that?’ I guess she only tolerated me asking because I was her lawyer. But I said, ‘No, I just ask because I’m curious.’ She wouldn’t tell me.”

“Then Mrs. Lott was wrong about how the engagement ended.”

“Oh my, yes. Ever since she married—and that’s been more than two score years and ten—Miss Maggie had been in an eternal tug-of-war over Bayard Lott, only Miss Amalia wasn’t tugging. Whatever it was Bayard done, Miss Amalia didn’t want a thing to do with him after that. Myself, I was at Avoca once when Bayard came into the yard, and Miss Amalia picked up a shotgun and said, ‘Stand back a distance, or I’ll shoot you.’ She was as cool as a fresh cake of ice, and I didn’t have a doubt in the world that she’d do what she said. Neither did Bayard, because he scurried back over to Shadowland. That’s his place.”

“Why do
you
think he shot my aunt and killed himself?”

Mr. Satterfield rocked back and forth in his chair as he thought over the question. “The second part’s easy. When he saw what he’d done, Bayard didn’t want to live anymore. The first
part, I don’t hardly know. My guess is Miss Amalia provoked him. She could be a provoking woman. Of course, Bayard wasn’t always right in his mind. He never worked a day in his life, but then, he’s not the only southern gentleman who hasn’t—‘genteel poverty,’ we call it. Worthless, some say, and I wouldn’t disagree. Bayard was the nearest thing to nothing that I ever saw. Now, you want to know what’s in this will?” He picked up spectacles that were hanging from a ribbon and set them on his nose. The ribbon, normally attached to his coat, had been unpinned, and it swung back and forth with the lazy motion of the ceiling fan.

Mr. Satterfield cleared his throat, leaned forward in his chair, and peered through dirty lenses at me. “Except for providing for Ezra and Aunt Polly, Miss Amalia left everything to you. You get Avoca and what she had in the bank. I can’t say what Avoca’s worth, but the account has somewhat more than ten thousand dollars in it. She kept it in a bank in New Orleans so folks wouldn’t know she had it. She was very private about that money. And you get anything you want that’s left in Miss Amalia’s house. It wouldn’t surprise me if folks are trying to sneak into it now, thinking there’s valuables hid away. Ezra’ll keep them out, but he’s old and a Negro, so I advise you to go out there soon to collect what you want.”

“Are you sure there aren’t any other relatives?”

“Natchez people always have relatives, but Miss Amalia didn’t like hers, except for you, and as far as I know, the others are gone anyway. She had me to write it down that she was disinheriting anybody who made a claim. She didn’t speak to her brother for years—her brother Frederick, that is. He passed on sometime
back. He didn’t have but one child, and I don’t know what’s become of her. Dead is my guess. Miss Amalia was always partial to you, even subscribed to one of the Denver newspapers because she liked to read about you and your social doings. She didn’t approve of a lady being in the newspaper, of course, but she liked to read about you just the same.”

The idea of this strange old lady peering into my life perplexed me. “Why me? Why leave her fortune to someone she’d never met? She and the rest of Father’s family treated him as if he didn’t exist.”

“I couldn’t say exactly. It might be she felt bad about that. Maybe she thought she should have raised him, been a mother to him after his own precious mother, Miss Emilie, died. But how could she? The captain had took to drink, and Miss Amalia had her hands full with him. Your daddy was better off up north. Still, I know it never felt right to Miss Amalia, letting him grow up the way he did. And it set real hard with her when she got that letter from your mama saying young Winship’d died.”

“Then why didn’t she reply?”

“Miss Amalia wrote an infrequent letter.” Mr. Satterfield took out his pocket watch again and flipped open the lid. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Since we are due at the Buzzard’s Nest in an hour, we can talk about the details tomorrow. I’ll draw up the papers for you to sign; it’ll take a little time to get the money, but if you’re in need, I can arrange for a part of it.” He glanced up, and I shook my head. “I’ll take you out to Avoca myself, so’s you can see if there’s anything you want for a keepsake.”

I stood then and, before remembering the limp handshakes,
almost put out my hand. Instead, I straightened my gloves and moved my pocketbook from one hand to another, silly gestures women make to stall for time. But there was no reason not to ask my question, so I removed the envelope with photos I’d taken from Mother’s house and lined up the portraits on the desk so that they faced Mr. Satterfield. “These were my father’s. Who are these people?”

Mr. Satterfield, who had risen, sat down again and looked at the photographs one at a time. “Bondurants mostly,” he replied. He pushed the picture of the old woman toward me. “Miss Emilie, your grandmother.” He moved the photograph of the old man next to the one of Emilie. “Captain Bondurant, your grandfather.” He picked up the picture of the young woman and looked at it closely. “This is Miss Amalia. In her last years, she grew littler all the time, and you forgot how tall she was in her prime. And see that hair? She was famous for it. It reached most nearly to her knees.” He held the picture closer to his spectacles. “You can’t tell from the likeness, but she had the whitest skin I ever saw, like cream—goat’s milk, I guess you could say.” He chuckled at his little joke and placed the photograph beside those of Amalia’s parents, but he continued to look at it. “She was as pretty as candied cherries. Did you know she was presented at the Court of St. James’s?”

“Yes.”

“And I expect this one is your father. He looks some like a Bondurant.” He pushed the baby picture forward.

“So the last one must be of Father’s brother,” I said.

Mr. Satterfield picked it up and studied it, slowly shaking his
head back and forth. Then he snorted and flung the photograph onto the desk. “Why, bless me, no, dear heart. He’s not a Bondurant.” He paused, then said, “Now why would your daddy have had a picture of Bayard Lott?”

T
HE
B
UZZARD’S
N
EST WAS NAMED
Fair Haven until a Union officer who was quartered there during the Civil War walked into the library, where illiterate Northern soldiers had ripped out the pages of books for toilet paper, then strewn the books across the floor. He declared the room looked worse than a buzzard’s nest. Pickett’s grandfather renamed his mansion to remind his descendants of the infamy of his unwanted Yankee guests.

Mr. Satterfield told me the story as we drove up to the sprawling neoclassical home in his Ford automobile (which he called a “Fode”). When he turned off the motor, there was the sound of a fountain splashing. The fountain was behind the house, he explained, and we would see it when we walked in the gardens after dinner. Pickett’s grandfather had installed it a hundred years before, and when Pickett and her husband restored the fountain,
they had searched in vain for water pipes. Then an old retainer told them that slaves had carried buckets of water up a ladder hidden in the shrubbery and poured it down a chute into a trough that led to the fountain. Natchez seemed to be about stories, and I hoped that some of the ones I heard tonight would be about Amalia. When I accepted Pickett’s invitation, I had expected nothing more than a pleasant diversion from the ominous duty of settling my aunt’s estate. But for some reason, probably curiosity, although perhaps something more, I had gotten caught up in Amalia’s death—and in her life—and I hoped to find out more about her over the course of the evening. I was beginning to feel a kinship with her.

A Negro butler opened the door before Mr. Satterfield could lift the heavy knocker, and he ushered us into a large central hallway. “Lookit here,” Mr. Satterfield said, tapping the head of his walking stick on the top of a table that was inlaid with a marble mosaic of birds and flowers. “Shipped here from France and boated up the Mississippi. Now see that?” He tapped one of the birds. “The eyes are gone. Every last bird had its eye scratched out by the Yankees. They must have used their knives. Yes, I’ll be good and damned if they didn’t.”

He sent me an accusing glance, as if I were responsible for blinding the birds. “Well, ’twasn’t your fault.” He thought a moment. “Miss Amalia never minded the Yankees so much, maybe because your daddy turned into one.” He asked the butler, “York, where’s Miss Pickett?”

“They in the East Room, sir. You the last.” Since we were right on time, I wondered about Pickett’s remark concerning the South’s lack of punctuality. It was likely that the others had
gathered ahead of time to discuss me. Well, why shouldn’t they? After all, I intended to discuss Amalia.

York led us across the marble floor, past a library where shelves were filled with old volumes, so either the books had been replaced after the Civil War or not all of them had fallen victim to Yankee sanitary habits. He took us into a princely room filled with rosewood furniture, ornate and old and very sharp, with cushions like boards. It might have been the most uncomfortable-looking room in the world. Modern chintz draperies kept it from feeling like a museum, but they added an incongruous touch of informality.

“Well, Sam darling, how’s things?” As Pickett greeted her uncle, the conversation in the room came to a stop. He kissed her cheek and said things were okay. She turned to me, and warmly welcomed me to the Buzzard’s Nest, making me glad I’d come. “Were you cooped up with Mr. Sam all afternoon, or did you see anything of our town?”

“I walked about a little this afternoon. There is an enormous white mansion not far from the—”

“Yes, that would be Stanton Hall,” she said, interrupting me, probably in an attempt to forestall a story from Mr. Satterfield about the house.

Taking my hand, she led me across the room as two men rose from one of the sofas adorned with filigreed wood. Two women sat in hard-backed little chairs with caned seats. They all stared at me so hard that Pickett laughed. “You must excuse us. We are all of us curious.”

“To see if I brought the goats?” When they did not respond, I
bit my tongue.
They
might make fun of Miss Amalia, but they would not put up with jokes from an outsider.

But after a few seconds, one of the men chuckled, and then he guffawed. “That’s a good one.”

A woman wearing a fussy black dress and a necklace with a diamond pendant as faceted as a prune whispered loudly behind her hand, “What did she say? Yankees are so hard to understand.”